You could recruit some rationalists among PUAs. They wholeheartedly share your sentiment that "rational agents must WIN"
You have. We do. And yes, they must.
Tim:
It seems to me you are being almost deliberately obtuse. Of course the brain has developed over the long course of evolution via sexual selection. The same process happens in parakeets. They have brains because they evolved brains. Some of that brain power went to making them better at catching prey, and some went to making them better mating-call singers, leading to larger brain size in the next generation. Humans just happen to be the brainiest of all creatures; but the mechanism is the same. You might as well argue that the "intelligence explosion" starts with the first prokaryote.
Ditto your argument about machines being used to improve machines. You know, cave dwellers used tools to improve their tools. Is that when the "intelligence explosion" began with recursion?
You are not even talking about the same topic that Eliezer is. I'm a low-ranking grunt in the rationalist army, and usually I just lurk here because I feel often feel out of my depth. But it's frustrating to see the thread get jacked by an argument that has no real content.
The problem you are having is that all of your individual points are true as far as they go, but you're just restating agreed-upon facts using some borrowed terms to make it sound grand and important. I suggest you re-read the posts Eliezer linked to about the "virtue of narrowness" and "sounding wise versus being wise."
Now, back to my lurker's cave.
Tim:
His point is that if you scoop out the hearts of the mother and father, they also won't do any reproducing. Which may or may not be just a cute rejoinder to your earlier post, the cuteness of which is also hard to descry.
But, Tim, honestly, brother, aren't we arguing semantics? Whether we call the process of evolution "blind" or "intelligent" up to this point, certainly it will be a new event in evolutionary history if the kind of self-improving AI that Eliezer is talking about takes off... "10^49 Planck intervals, or enough time for a population of 2GHz processor cores to perform 10^15 serial operations one after the other."
10^15 deliberate serial operations in a week is a VASTLY new way of self-evolving. Now, if you think Eliezer is wrong in thinking this will happen, I am interested to hear why... I certainly don't know if he is right or wrong and want to consider more arguments. But your argument (repeated many, many times on this blog now) is clever, but there's no relevant content.
At what point does raising a clever objection cross over into trolling and self-promotion being a crank? Sorry for the cross-talk everyone, but it's grating.